Saturday, June 28, 2014

Great news everyone! Comicked is now available for Android smartphones and tablets, as well as iPhones!

We are happy to announce that after an enormous amount of work we finally think that Comicked is ready for mobile phones. Previously the app was only available for the iPad. However, the availability just got much better! Just recently, we rolled out the Android version of our app. It's available on the Google Play store for free! The app is designed to work well on both smartphones and tablets.

But wait, there's more! We also released an update for the iOS version of Comicked, making it finally available also for the iPhone. You can get the universal iOS app on the App Store! The price of the app is the same as previously: zero!

The mobile version of Comicked has – of course – the same awesome collection of comics as the tablet version. There is also a "Mobile friendly" category with comics that fits small screen sizes well.

Protip: The comic strips are bigger in landscape mode. Rotate your device from portrait to landscape to see more details!

Comicked has a great collection of the most popular comics of the Web; comics with hundreds of thousands of online readers. There are currently more than 15,000 comic strips on Comicked and new strips are published on daily basis!

Please note that we are not finished, not even close! We have plenty of plans to make the app even better for both readers and comic artists! Follow us and stay tuned!

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Have you already spotted the name Comicked in your news feed? If you are still unsure what the thing is all about, then keep reading. In this post we will explain what Comicked is – and what it will be. Shortly put, Comicked is a comic app that aims to be the all-in-one solution for both reading and publishing comic strips. We will discuss these two sides in the next sections.

Read comics

In its simplicity, Comicked is a kick-ass app for reading comic strips – for free! If you are bored at work, make sure your boss is not looking. Open the app and just read! Your co-workers may be wondering about the laugh from your cubicle so remember to share the best strips with them.

We are constantly improving the app making it even easier to find and read new content. No matter if you prefer gags or stories, you can find content that you like – everything in one app. Did I already mention that it is completely free?

We have just released the app for the iPad worldwide! Get it now on the App Store. And yes, we are already working on other platforms so stay tuned for updates. We chose to develop the app with modern HTML5 technologies to make it easy to port to other platforms.

Publish comics

Our vision is to create an easy and free platform for publishing comics. Our ultimate goal is to provide an all-in-one solution for independent comic artists, allowing you to host your comics, publish them on every platform, communicate with your fans, and to make a living with your works! We also want to make sure that your comic can get its own personal look among all the comics.

Did you know that it takes a huge amount of work to draw comics? Watch the following time lapse video by Gregor Czaykowski from Loading Artist to get an appreciation for the art form. The clip shows 9 hours of work on a single comic strip packed down to less than 10 minutes! Loading Artists is one of the great comics that you can find on Comicked and we are proud to work with him, as well as with many other extremely talented comic artists.

As you can see, drawing a comic strip every day could easily be a full-time job – with zero salary. Drawing comics is a form of art and a hobby for most artists. However, publishing comics is not only drawing, but you also need to host and maintain your work on the web as well as gain visibility and publicity for your comic. Only if your comic is popular enough are you able to earn some pocket money from advertisements and donations. And only if you are lucky enough to be one of the most popular webcomic artists in the world are you able to sell merchandise and get sponsors to make a living with your artwork.

We intend to ease the pain of all that additional work. Because readers only need one app, it is much easier for them to find your comic and become active readers. The best part is, however, that we enable comic artists to earn actual money from their work. Currently, Comicked works with an advertising model. To make the model as fair as possible, we are using revenue sharing. That is, the majority of all the profits from the app are shared fairly among the comic artists. However, this is only the beginning. We have bigger plans than just advertisements. The most popular comic artists get most of their revenues from merchandising. On Comicked, you can either point your readers to your existing webshop or, in the future as we see it, you will be able to create a webshop for your comic merchandise. Your job is to do what you do best: design the graphics for the products of your choice. Then you just click some buttons and voilá: you have cool fan stuff for sale.

If you are a comic artist and got interested, then please contact us! We are more than happy to work with you. If you know a friend that could be interested, spread the word!

Bottom line

Comicked aims to merge comic reading and publishing. We want to attract a large audience in order to make the app interesting for both readers and artists. Therefore, we want to provide the app free of charge and without limitations, as well as port the app to as many platforms as possible. We believe that the best value from Comicked will be achieved by building a happy user-base. It will be a win-win situation for everybody.

We have worked hard on this app and we are happy that the iPad version is finally available worldwide. That said, this is only the beginning. If you agree that this is an awesome thing, spread the word! It is quite easy nowadays with "share" and "like" buttons all over.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

We have just made a worldwide release of Comicked on the iPad. If you have not yet got the app, you have no idea what you have missed, so go and get it now from the App Store. And if you don't have an iPad, then stay tuned, as we are already working on other platforms!

To celebrate the global launch, we decided to create this blog. Its primary goal is to keep you informed about Comicked. We would also like to use this blog as a channel to share our thoughts about comics, entrepreneurship and technology. If you feel your attention span requires shorter posts, then you can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

What is that thing and why does it exists?

We are already working on another post that will give you a better insight about what is Comicked and how it will turn a new page on both comic reading and publishing. Meanwhile, go and try it yourself or visit the website!

Who are those guys?

We are three engineers who love webcomics. One of us have even held a pen, but in order to protect the eyes and mental health of our readers, you will not see those works. Instead, you will see a great collection of absolutely awesome comics from real comic artists! We will give more honor to those great guys in our following posts, but now, let me introduce our team.

Otto Nyberg, CEO

Otto is the business mind and strategist behind Witchcraft Labs. He possesses a level of persistence and dedication reserved only for the few.

Antti Maula, CTO and The Architect

Antti is a brilliant software engineer. He makes sure that our back-end systems are performing as expected, and does not fear using any kind of magic needed to get the job done.

Kimmo Kiiski, Usability Wizard

Kimmo provides the strongest magic in the company. Kimmo is in charge of the front-end. His creations for usability and visual layout are far beyond "innovative"; it is like a logical extension of hard-wired human nature.